Disappointment

The older I become the more disappointed I am with human behavior. Sure I am disappointed with the performance of our President and Congress (that is obvious to anyone who reads my blog). And I am not just disappointed in Obama; I was also disappointed in many aspects of the performance by his predecessor – GW Bush. But I am more disappointed with general human behavior – people have become shallow and narrow minded - seemingly more influenced by political jargon and talking points outlined by amateur media pundits. People, in general, have become less responsible and chose to live in the past by blaming everyone else for what is wrong with their lives – just like politicians. For instance, it is someone else’s fault when we are in debt and cannot pay the bills (this is true whether it is individual, corporate, or government debt).

I recently stopped participating on Facebook. I tried to join the narcissistic generation, but after a year the disappointment in lack of original thought and innovativeness forced me to stop participating. Remember, Facebook was created by a few social illiterates who can only communicate behind the face of technology. These people cannot communicate face to face or even over the phone, so they developed a way around their social retarded ways. Now, the globe is becoming socially retarded. Do not get me wrong, I have no issue hearing about what friends are up to (as long as it is not a constant daily update) or hearing their about their opinions. Facebook participants tend to post a link to an article that expresses their beliefs. The problem with this is that these articles are always from some opinionated news source: NY Times, Huffington Post, Fox News, MSNBC, and so forth. What disenfranchises me is that Facebook participants fail to provide their original thoughts about the article subject matter, a synopsis, or even an analysis as to why they liked the article. And what’s worse, 99% of these articles are not only highly opinionated and polarizing; they are not backed up with facts or data. In fact, very rarely are reasonable solutions proposed to solve the problem addressed in the subject matter, instead the authors of these articles like to place blame or fault. To make matters worse yet, most of the journalists and media pundits are giving opinions on topics they have absolutely no expertise: green technology, climate change, or food additives to name a few examples. But society, and my friends included, seems to think what they read or watch is gospel. And if all this is not bad enough, everyone in society thinks they are an expert on everything – the Iraq War, enhanced interrogation techniques, global warming and so on (armchair politicians). Everyone is 100% correct while adversaries are 100% wrong and there is no room to compromise.

I may agree with certain opinions of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck, but I came to those conclusions by investigating facts and data (not reading polarizing and biased articles by self-proclaimed experts). I do not watch these pundits because they are polarizing and do not back up their opinions with solid arguments based on data.

I do not care if someone disagrees with my ideologies or philosophies, but I expect people to back it up with original thought, innovation, data, and facts – not a link to some article written by a polarized journalist, media pundit, Hollywood star, or politician. And I expect to hear innovative solutions to problems instead of living in the past by placing fault and blame. Is this too much to ask or expect? It is hard to believe we live in a society of know-it-alls, but we cannot debate or talk about problems and issues from a solution based approach instead of dwelling on past mistakes. Today, a typical debate over an issue generally includes insinuating adversaries are extremists, Nazi’s, or racists. When will this nonsense stop?

My Book: Is America Dying? (Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble)